Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery is an OSR game that proposes a lot of options: more classes (more than 30), more races (traditional and others), more spells (666 exactly); in fact more of everything*. Yet, if you are already familiar with any other retro-clone or simulacrum of the OSR movement, you already know the rules: nothing to re-learn. Fantastic Heroes & Witchery proposes 430 pages of rules to play either in the vanilla fantasy, dark fantasy, or swords & planets genres, with its rules on corrupting sorcery, technological equipment, and much more. The PDF is fully bookmarked, providing a complete index and table of contents with hyperlinks, that will make navigation within its pages very easy.

(* Note however, that Fantastic Heroes & Witchery doesn't provide monsters and magical items. These will come in future supplements. Nonetheless, as FH&W is compatible with most games of the OSR movement, you can use creatures and magic items coming from such sources without need for conversions.)

Are the other books like: Blasphemous Bestiary still being worked on? Official website hasn't had any updates or anything in some time.

PETROS POctober 02, 2017 6:52 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Greetings. I have got both the pdf and the original paperback (2.0 edition). Is there any reason i should get 2.1 hardcover? Are the changes substantial?

Chris TAugust 09, 2016 8:17 pm UTC

PURCHASER

On the character sheet, what are the Random number, Maximum number, Sever %, and Facile % columns for next to the ability scores?

John ADecember 12, 2014 2:54 am UTC

PURCHASER

This work is just plain awesome. I use it for inspiration and reference. It provides me with everything I always wanted to include in my gaming, but was not creative enough to design myself. For example, I use the XP chart, the suggested rules for preparing lower level spells in place of higher level spells as well as let them wait to prepare some spells later int he day. I use the suggestions for incantations, Friars, etc. It is a beautiful book and a great resource. I highly recommend it. :)

I appreciate your explanation. Your book is a great OSR toolbox; the classes are more like I would design and want to play than the original game. ...looking forward to the scifi book.

Curt MMay 13, 2014 8:23 pm UTC

Hi there. I recently purchased the hardcover. Does this entitle me to a copy of the PDF? Thanks.

Dominique CMay 18, 2014 7:50 am UTC

PUBLISHER

Well, sorry, but no. I tried to set a reasonable price (especially when you consider that it is a 430 pages book, in small font and fully illustrated) for both the PDF found here, and the printed book (available on Lulu or Amazon). Many huge rulebooks in PDF are sold at 15 to 20 $. I think that 7.50 $ is more than reasonable; and likewise for the softcover at 25.50 $ (with discount) on Amazon. Hence, I won't make bundle of print + pdf, especially as they are sold by different channels.

Now it's true that I gave a few complimentary copies to people who had bought the first edition, and had previously told about the game in forums. I wanted to apologize for the many typos and errors found in the first edition (that are now corrected in the present, 2.1 edition), so gave them a free PDF; and I wanted to thank those who made the game known on forums (who incidentally were often those who had bought the version 1).

But now, the PDF and printed books are not sold in bundles.

Brian SNovember 12, 2014 6:29 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Are the pictures in the paid pdf clear? The ones without the index, while you can see them, are blurred.

Dominique CFebruary 10, 2015 11:39 am UTC

PUBLISHER

Yes this PDF (at approximately 43 mb) has clear images in addition to full index and table of content.

Full Disclosure: I have worked with the author, Dominique Crouzet, in the past on a couple of projects. I think Dom is a great guy and I love the work we had done together. I am going to review FH&W on it's own merits. For this review I am [...]

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery is the Holy Grail of Old School D&D. It takes the simplicity of B/X, the flavor of 1st edition, the multitude of options from 2nd edition, and combines them with the more rational, consistent mechanics of 3rd edition [...]

Its a retro-clone. There are hundreds of them. This one, however, is awesome. You get swords and sorcery as well as swords and planets in the same book. Twists on standard classes, as well as loads of new ones. There is a simple skill system a [...]

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